试论历史人类学与中国近代史研究中的几个问题

兴起于20世纪80年代中后期的历史人类学,尽管从学术传承上分属于两个不同的学科,但它的出现为消融历史学与人类学的边界,促成两个学科的交叉与融合,起到了不可低估的作用。在历史学内,“历史人类学”的形成亦经历了一个从社会史、社会文化史到历史人类学的演变过程。而在中国近代史领域,历史人类学已经展开一些研究实践,但是尚需进一步提倡。这种提倡表现在三个方面:底层视角、区域经验、文本与田野互动。历史人类学会对中国近代史研究产生有益的影响,会成为一种介于宏大叙事与经验性实证研究的“中层理论”。从历史学科的本位出发,历史人类学对人类学的吸收借鉴颇多,但是不能轻易放弃历史学科本位。     

STORY MAKES HISTORY,THEORY MAKES STORY: DEVELOPING RÜSEN'S HISTORIK IN LOGICAL AND SEMIOTIC DIRECTIONS

This essay will argue that the traditional opposition between narrative and theory in historical sciences is dissolved if we conceive of narratives as theoretical devices for understanding events in time through special concepts that abridge typical sequences of events. I shall stress, in the context of the Historical Knowledge Epistemological Square (HKES) that emerged with the scientization of history, that history is always narrative, story has a theoretical ground of itself, and scientific histories address the need for a conceptual progression in ever‐improved narratives. This will lead to identification of three major theoretical levels in historical stories: naming, plotting (or emplotment), and formalizing. We revisit Jörn Rüsen's theory of history as the best starting point, and explore to what extent it could be developed by (i) taking a deeper look into narratological knowledge, and (ii) reanalyzing logically the conceptual strata in order to bridge the overrated Forschung/Darstellung (research/exposition) divide. The corollary: we should consider (scientific) historical writing as the last step of historical research, not as the next step after research is over. This thesis will drive us to a reconsideration of the German Historik regarding the problem of interpretation and exposition. Far from alienating history from science, narrative links history positively to anthropology and biology. The crossing of our triad name‐plot‐model with Rüsen's four theoretical levels (categories‐types‐concepts‐names) points to the feasibility of expanding Rüsen's Historik in logical and semiotic directions. Story makes history, theory makes story, and historical reason may proceed.     

WHAT I BELIEVE: A MEMOIR OF PROCESSUALISM TO NEOHISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

In North America, historical anthropology is closely linked with political-economic studies. The materialist and comparative emphases of the political economy approach have had a strong impact on archaeological research in the Southeast and elsewhere. The increasing popularity of idealist positions in some quarters of archaeological theory has led to a waning of traditional political-economic research. However, recent trends in postcolonial theory suggest that a neohistorical anthropology can accommodate both materialist and idealist viewpoints. Current research on warfare in the Southeast exemplifies the advantages of multivariate vantage points for investigating the past.     

Developing Complex Societies in Southeast Asia: Using Archaeological and Historical Evidence

A number of archaeologists are making significant advances in the historical archaeology of Southeast Asia. The papers presented in this issue, and the one that preceded it, provide new insights and exciting directions for future research.     

People with history: An update on historical archaeology in the United States

Historical archaeology has expanded greatly in the past decade. This essay discusses some of the trends and themes that have become important in historical archaeology in the United States since 1982. The first section briefly assesses the field. The second discusses capitalism as one theme that may serve to unify research. Cross-cultural research, integrative analyses, and the concepts of power and ideology are central to this theme. The third section is a brief case study concerning the historic Cherokee. The conclusion comments on the institutional state of historical archaeology.     

Mobility,Land Use,and Leadership in Small-Scale and Middle-Range Societies

Over the past century, the fields of archaeology and anthropology have produced a number of different theoretical approaches and a substantial body of data aimed at ways to understand hunter-gatherer, horticultural, and agropastoral societies. This review considers four recent edited volumes on foraging and food-producing societies. These books deal in innovative ways with a broad array of issues, including transitions in human prehistory and history, mobility, land use, sharing, technology, social leveling strategies, leadership, and the formation of social hierarchies. Small-scale societies include hunter-gatherers or foragers, while middle-range societies may include complex hunter-gatherer (ones with storage and delayed return systems), horticultural, and agropastoral societies, some of them with institutionalized leadership, status hierarchies, and differential access to power and resources. An important set of themes in these books includes diversity in adaptations to complex social and natural environments, the significance of (1) matter, (2) energy, and (3) information in small-scale and middle-range societies on several continents, the persistence of foraging, and the development of inequality. The roles of sharing, exchange, and leadership in small-scale and middle-range societies are explored, as are explanations for social, economic, and political transformations among groups over time and across space.     

Biblical anthropology and the idea of human prehistory in late antiquity

Late Antiquity is an important period in the history of anthropology because it marks a divide between the naturalistic and rationalistic anthropological ideas of Greco-Roman philosophers and the "biblical anthropology" that was formulated by Medieval Christian writers. The biblical anthropology that emerged in Late Antiquity addressed the question of the origin of the first humans, our relationship to the natural world, and the original state of mankind. While early Christian philosophers based much of this biblical anthropology on the Genesis account of early human history, they also utilized a great deal of Greco-Roman philosophy in order to expound a vision of human prehistory that profoundly influenced anthropological thought well into the modern era.     

文本话语与行为规范:西藏宗教人物传记的史学史意义

From the perspective of historical anthropology, this article examines a great deal of the biographies of religious figures in Tibetan history, reveals their special way of writing, classification, and circulation. In Tibetan Buddhism, biographies of religious figures are considered as a subject’s demise (lung-rgyun) and have their special meanings. They are the text of the largest quantity in the historical works of Tibet and had great influence on Tibetan historiography. A comprehensive research on their cultural characteristic, historical evolvement and historical influence will help us understand the Tibetan culture in depth. __________ Translated from Shixueshi Yanjiu 史学史研究 (Journal of Historiography), 2007, (4): 67–77     

7. TOWARD A GENEALOGY OF THE RESEARCHER AS SUBJECT IN POST/DECOLONIAL PACIFIC HISTORIES

Recent discussion has drawn out some important differences between postcolonial and decolonial theories. The former are associated primarily with the work of South Asian scholars working in cultural, literary, or historical studies; decolonial scholarship, by contrast, is located in Latin America and has emerged from sociological critiques of dependency theory. Shifting the locus of debate to the Pacific centers another subject in globalizing critiques of colonialism: the historian in indigenous communities. In this article, I examine how the role of the researcher is conceptualized in Linda Tuhiwai Smith's landmark work Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999). Revealing tensions between objectivity and intersubjectivity, on the one hand, and between essentialist identity and hybridity, on the other, I ask why Smith's book hinges on dichotomizing nonindigenous and indigenous researchers, who are by turn enabled or constrained in a colonial present. I situate this late twentieth-century subject in a genealogy of indigenous engagement with history and anthropology in New Zealand and contemporary problems of historical justice.     

The Marriage of Marx and Darwin?

Recent attempts to develop scientific research strategies for cultural evolution have mostly drawn upon evolutionary biology, but within anthropology there is also an influential tradition of non-biological evolutionary thought whose basic principle is adaptation to the environment. This article is mainly concerned with the "cultural materialist" school of Marvin Harris, but also treats the recent attempt of Jared Diamond to create a more radical model of evolutionary ecology. I argue that the ecological tradition does not represent a real alternative to neo-Darwinism and is in fact a pseudo-Darwinist theory. I also suggest that the bias in favor of materialistic explanation in cultural evolution may not be justified.     

Kommentar: The Economic or the Economy? – Reflections on the Objects of Historical Epistemology

In the recent decade the perspectives of historical epistemology have turned economic practices into a novel object of study: the focus lies on how discourses, techniques of measurement and valuation produce economic facts. 1 The research on the historical epistemologies of economic facts belongs to a broader scholarly endeavor that takes place in cultural anthropology, social theory, literary studies, political theory and history. This interdisciplinary work brings to light how deeply economic issues are constituted by intermingling a set of cultural, political, technical and legal distinctions, which distinguish what counts as properly economic from what does not. 2 In this perspective, the very definition of economy becomes a hybrid and contentious affair. The central theoretical question for the historical epistemology and cultural anthropology of economy is currently how to conceptualize the link between epistemic practices and acts of ‘doing the economy’. This special issue on the Historical Episte mology of the Economic pushes us to think about this crucial link. Monika Dommann, Daniel Speich Chassé and Mischa Suter explore different modes of approaching the interlacing of epistemology and economy. These modes can be discussed under the following headings: 1) Pragmatics and Poetologies of Knowledge, 2) Economic Discourses and Epistemic Techniques, 3) Boundaries of Economy. On the basis of the richness of the historical material and the finely grained arguments that these papers bring forth, I will elaborate on the conceptualization of these linkages between epistemology and economy. My discussion culminates in the attempt to clarify an analytical distinction that is freely used in this special issue but that deserves further discussion: the distinction between the economic and the economy as an object of historical epistemology. My question is, does it matter if we write a historical epistemology of the economic or of the economy? What distinction do we wish to make by juxtaposing these two?     

Animal DNA in PCR reagents plagues ancient DNA research

Molecular archaeology brings the tools of molecular biology to bear on fundamental questions in archaeology, anthropology, evolution, and ecology. Ancient DNA research is becoming widespread as evolutionary biologists and archaeologists discover the power of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify DNA from ancient plant and animal remains. However, the extraordinary susceptibility of PCR to contamination by extraneous DNA is not widely appreciated. We report the independent observation of DNA from domestic animals in PCR reagents and ancient samples in four separate laboratories. Since PCR conditions used in ancient DNA analyses are extremely sensitive, very low concentrations of contaminating DNA can cause false positives. Previously unidentified animal DNA in reagents can confound ancient DNA research on certain domestic animals, especially cows, pigs, and chickens.     

Establishing insurance markets in settler economies. a comparison of Australian and South Africa insurance markets, 1820-1910

ABSTRACT

How did insurance markets in the settler economies of Australia and South Africa develop? This paper investigates the establishment of the local insurance industries in two settler economies in the wake of the absence of comparative studies in the emergence of insurance markets in the periphery. The paper compares conditions in these settler economies and notes the innovative role of local entrepreneurs. British insurance companies extended operations into the British colonies, but local interests emerged to challenge their dominance. Innovations in organisational form, product offerings and distribution channels afforded local entrepreneurs a competitive advantage in the life market. Collusion in the fire market restricted innovative practices and retained foreign control. This article explains the agency of local entrepreneurs in the emergence of insurance markets in two settler societies at the end of the nineteenth century. This historical development path has notable implications for the current development of insurance markets in Africa.     

KOSELLECK,ARENDT, AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE

This essay is the first attempt to compare Reinhart Koselleck's Historik with Hannah Arendt's political anthropology and her critique of the modern concept of history. Koselleck is well‐known for his work on conceptual history as well as for his theory of historical time(s). It is my contention that these different projects are bound together by Koselleck's Historik, that is, his theory of possible histories. This can be shown through an examination of his writings from Critique and Crisis to his final essays on historical anthropology, most of which have not yet been translated into English. Conversely, Arendt's political theory has in recent years been the subject of numerous interpretations that do not take into account her views about history. By comparing the anthropological categories found in Koselleck's Historik with Arendt's political anthropology, I identify similar intellectual lineages in them (Heidegger, Löwith, Schmitt) as well as shared political sentiments, in particular the anti‐totalitarian impulse of the postwar era. More importantly, Koselleck's theory of the preconditions of possible histories and Arendt's theory of the preconditions of the political, I argue, transcend these lineages and sentiments by providing essential categories for the analysis of historical experience.     

Bordering on anthropology the dialectics of a national tradition in Mexico

This paper explores knowledge production within the framework of a «national anthropology». Mexico developed one of the earliest, largest and most successful «national» anthropologies of the postcolonial world, yet it has been haunted by constant absorption of its leading practitioners into the state apparatus and by a sense of intellectual discontinuity and isolation. The author explores four aspects of Mexican anthropology in the historical contexts in which they emerged: the role of the discipline in shaping a national image (1850–1900); its strategies of intervention in the modernization and «incorporation» of the indigenous and «backward» population (1880–1930); its role in the regulation of a development orthodoxy (1940–1968); and its role in the reformulation of a national image in the face of massive urbanization (1968–1980s).     

Pour une Épistémologie de la Controverse Historiographique

The great historical debates were generally fought on different fields at the same time. The present article tries to analyze the actual debates in the context and perspective of different research experiences, aiming to highlight their theoretical and empirical results. In focussing on the controversies about the history of society and historical anthropology it questions in the same time the recurrencies recalling the crisis at the end of the 18th and the beginning of 20th century and their epistemological consequences.     

Political Modernity and Secularization: Thoughts from the Japanese Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Although some politics and international relations discourses continue to maintain that there is a causal link between secularism and political modernity, religious studies, anthropology, and history research over the past decade has been rather merciless in debunking this idea as one of the tropes of Western imperialism. This article considers at how Japanese political thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries engaged this trope, and how that engagement contributed to the particular relationship between religion and governance that emerged in the modern Japanese empire (1868–1945). The article argues that developments in the Confucian political thought of the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868), particularly in the works of Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728) and Aizawa Seishisai (1792–1863), contributed significantly to the capacity of Japanese thinkers and politicians to creatively engage the role of religion in Western imperialism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

A College Student's Rural Journey: Early Sociology and Anthropology in China Seen through Fieldwork on Sichuan's Secret Society

This paper focuses on the investigators of rural society in the Republican period,specifically research made through fieldwork on the Gowned Brothers (or,Paoge) in 1940s Sichuan.It takes up one such investigator,Shen Baoyuan—a student at Yenching University;her youthful work never became published or recognized.The present study reveals how the pioneers of Chinese sociology and anthropology,who called themselves "rural activists," tried to understand rural China.It argues that the developments in those fields in China of the 1920s and 1940s made it possible for us today to have a better understanding of the contemporary rural problems.The investigators played an important role in the Rural Construction and Rural Education Movements in Republican China.They show us how Western sociology and anthropology were localized in order to answer "Chinese questions" and to solve "Chinese problems." As source material,these investigations have given us rich records,which in turn have become precious sources and historical memories of rural China's past.     

乡村史、气候史及年鉴学派——埃马纽埃尔·勒华拉杜里教授访谈录

法国著名历史学家勒华拉杜里教授在访谈中讲述了三个方面的问题:从乡村史研究上说,他的《蒙塔尤》一书的成功在于他受到美国以村庄为研究对象的人类学的影响,从而得以从一个村庄的角度解读《雅克.富尼埃宗教审判记录簿》;作为最早从事气候史研究的历史学家,他注重探讨气候变化与革命等历史事件之间的关联,并主张对不同国家的气候进行比较研究;作为法国年鉴学派第三代代表人物,他是一个唯物论者,继承了布罗代尔和拉布鲁斯关注物质现象这一传统。     

Colonialism,Capital, and the Rise of the Structural-Functionalist School of British Anthropology

It is by now a truism that anthropology, especially British social anthropology, emerged under the regime of colonialism, and thus, to some extent, bears the imprint of and some responsibility for that oppressive institution. The reality is much more interesting. This paper, by focusing on the role of funding in the success of many intellectual paradigms, traces the source of the pre-eminence of British structural-functionalism not to the colonial system, but rather to an American intellectual tradition that was progressive, reform-minded, and devoted to benefiting oppressed peoples, especially African-Americans and latterly Africans.